Australian Swamp Rat

When conducting their regular bird surveys, the Friends of Drouin’s Trees surveyors will sometimes encounter a Swamp Rat, or more correctly, Australian Swamp Rat. Rattus lutreolus, is an endemic rodent that inhabits dense vegetation, usually alongside water courses, swamps and lakes down the eastern seaboard and in Tasmania.

Swamp Rat - Amberly Bush Reserve Drouin

The Swamp Rat is largely vegetarian and is often active during the day.

Swamp Rat - Thomas Maddock Reserve Drouin

Sometimes referred to as ‘ecosystem engineers’, the Swamp Rat forms tunnels through the thick vegetation and often scratches ‘runways’ in the ground below their cover.

Rodent 'runways' - Amberly Bush Reserve Drouin

Cats, dogs, altered drainage patterns, bushfire, anticoagulant rodenticides, and competition with invasive species are the principal threats facing this wonderful little animal.

Swamp Rat - Golden Whistler Reserve Drouin

Swamp Rats and their close cousins, Bush Rats, are native Australian mammals that have evolved on this continent over millions of years. They seldom invade human habitation and are not disease vectors like the introduced pests - Black Rat and Brown Rat. It is generally accepted that Black Rats and Brown Rats arrived as recently as 1787 with the First Fleet.

Black (or Brown?) Rat - Thomas Maddock Reserve Drouin

Swamp Rats grow to about 16-20cm (Black and Brown Rats are larger). Swamp Rats have small ears that if folded forward, would not reach their eyes (Black and Brown Rats have obvious large ears).  Swamp Rat tails are shorter than their body (Black and Brown Rats have tails equal or longer than their body). Swamp Rats are often diurnal (Black and Brown Rats are mostly nocturnal).

 Native and introduced rats: some quick and dirty facts (Museums Victoria)

Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike

Apart from the obvious black face of the mature adult, one of the best identifiers of the Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike is its trilling, churring call often repeated several times. Another is the way it folds its wings on landing, which is the reason for its alternative common name: Shufflewing.

The Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike, Coracina novaehollandiae (Coracina = little raven, and novaehollandiae = New Holland, an old name for Australia) is an endemic bird that is fairly common in this district, especially in summer (some references call it the ‘summer bird’). It is mostly described as nomadic-migratory.

There is some evidence that the same birds return to the same territory each season. The Black-faced Cuckoo-shrike inhabits open woodlands and ‘fringe’ habitats, generally avoiding ‘closed’ forests and rainforests.

Larger insects and their larvae are a favourite food, and BFCs often seem to arrive on cue when there is an outbreak of farmland pest insects. They fly with long undulations – a bit like the Grey Shrike-thrush – and often perch on an exposed limb to survey their territory for evidence of their next meal.

Masked Lapwing

These days, Masked Lapwings are often seen in urban spaces such as parks, ovals, even home gardens at times. They are a bird that is at ease with being in open spaces. In fact, as many people will testify, they even lay their eggs in very exposed spots: nature strips, railway yards, sports grounds, rooftops, etc. Although adapted to urban living, Masked Lapwings natural surroundings usually include coastlines, grasslands and wetlands.

At Thomas Maddock Reserve Drouin - recent bird survey

The ‘old’ common name, Spur-winged Plover, is derived from the fact the bird has a spur on the ‘elbow’ of its wing. The spur is normally hidden under some feathers and is used to deter invaders of its territory. Especially when nesting, Masked Lapwings will swoop cats, dogs, other birds, people, etc, if the nest or the babies are approached too closely. Despite some urban myths, the spur is not venomous. The parent bird will sometimes employ the ‘broken wing’ method of drawing people away from their nest site too.

At nest - spur clearly showing (credit: Australian Museum)

The ‘mask’ refers to the look given by the yellow wattles and lappets on the face.

Lapwings and plovers are two separate but closely related families. Also, there are several species and races of lapwings. ‘Our’ Masked Lapwing should perhaps more correctly be called the Black-shouldered Lapwing. The scientific epithet for Masked Lapwing is Vanellus miles. ‘Vanellus’ = lapwing (a diminutive of vannus = winnowing/fan – the sound of the wings flapping in flight) and ‘miles’ = soldier (upright stance, attack…?).

At Cranbourne Botanic Gardens with babies

Masked Lapwings feed on insects and their larvae, and worms. Their call is a rapid and loud ‘kekekekekekek…’, often heard after dark.

 

 

Fulfilled Frogs

The bad news

Worldwide, frog populations are being devastated by a microscopic aquatic fungal parasite, chytrid fungus (dcceew.gov.au PDF), that infects a frog’s skin. While under water or hibernating underground, frogs breathe and absorb nutrients through their skin. Once infected, the frog becomes sluggish, or loses its appetite, or just sits in the open. Since it first began to explode globally in the 1970s, chytrid fungus has already caused extinctions and severe rates of mortality in some populations. Massive frog fatalities began in Australia in the 1990s.

The spread of chytrid fungus in wild populations is difficult to control. Research suggests that some populations appear immune. Captive frogs can fully recover with anti-fungal treatment and other supportive management. Monitoring the impact of the disease, detecting new outbreaks, establishing control and quarantine zones, are some of the strategies being employed to try and mitigate the effects of this devastating disease.

The good news

There is a lot we (individually) can do to help our aquatic friends: in our gardens, plant natives, throw out the pesticides and weed killers, and build some frog habitat. A frog pond/bog does not have to be a major construction. A tipped over ceramic pot or some extruded bricks close by a near ground level (consistent) water source will do. There are lots of online resources (Sustainable Gardening Australia PDF) for ideas.

Eastern Banjo Frog (Pobblebonk)

This burrowing frog is a common Gippsland amphibian. Banjos can remain buried for long periods and then emerge after some rain. It makes its ‘bonk’ or ‘plonk’ call usually after dark.  The call is described as sounding like a banjo string being plucked.

Southern Brown Tree Frog

This little frog, 25-45mm, can be quite common in home gardens. The Southern Brown Tree Frog is very agile and is known to leap into the air to catch a flying insect. As its name suggests, it is a good climber. The Southern Brown Tree Frog’s call is described as a rapid, whirring, ‘creeeeeee-creee-creee-cree-cree-cree’ repeated 4 or 5 times.

Frogs are an essential part of a variety of ecosystems. They eat a lot of pest invertebrates and they themselves, and their tadpoles, are an important part of the food chain. Because they are sensitive to their environment, frogs are good bioindicators.

 What’s not to like?

 

Cabbage White butterfly

Slightly worn male (one black spot on the forewing)

Google ‘Cabbage White butterfly’ and you get hundreds of sites recommending ways and means of controlling this pest species. The host plant for this species is anything in the brassica family: cabbage, cauliflower, kale, broccoli, etc.

 Feeding on a Trigger plant on Mt St Gwinnear

Cabbage White, Pieris rapae, is a common butterfly in urban and market gardens. Its natural range is Europe, Asia and North Africa. After being accidentally introduced in Melbourne in 1929, the species is now widespread in the major cities and towns around the perimeter of Australia, particularly in the southern states.

While the larvae are exceptionally voracious eaters of the brassica family, the adult butterfly is happy to seek its diet of nectar from native and non-native flowers, especially if they are coloured purple, blue or yellow.

Female (two black spots on forewing)

Cabbage Whites are described as erratic flyers around our urban gardens, but they can be very direct and strong fliers too; adults have been recorded as flying up to 12km in one flight.

Swordgrass Brown butterfly

The Swordgrass Brown, Tisiphone Abeona, is a fairly common Gippsland butterfly. There are several sub-species up and down the eastern seaboard and all are endemic.

As the common name suggests, their host plant is swordgrass, in this district, mainly Red-fruit Saw-sedge. The caterpillars feed on the leaves mostly in the mornings and evenings and take refuge at other times in the leaf litter at the bottom of the sedge.

Swordgrass Browns are large, handsome butterflies with a wingspan of 5-6cm. They are slow, graceful fliers, usually flying in sunlit patches of woodland and swampy places, often only a metre or two above the ground. They are described as sedentary and when located they will not be far from their host plant.

This butterfly was first described and named by the Anglo-Irish ‘gentleman naturalist’ Edward Donovan, in1805: “There are few infects more ftriking in appearance then Papileo Abeona. This appears to be one of the more common fpecies of the Butterfly tribe in many parts of the Auftralafian regions: we receive it in this country not very unfrequently among infects from the vicinity of the Englifh fettlements at Port Jackfon.”  In 1819, the German entomologist Jacob Hübner renamed it Tisiphone abeona,  maintaining the strange use of Greek and Roman mythology to name species: Tisiphone was the avenger of murder, a Greek underworld goddess, and Abeona was the Roman goddess of departures. Go figure.

 

Wonga Pigeon

The father of Australian ornithology, the eminent naturalist John Gould, when describing this bird gave its first feature as: ‘a great delicacy for the table; its large size and the whiteness of its flesh rendering it in this respect second to no other member of its family’. Indeed, the genus name given the bird, Leucosarcia means white flesh. How things have changed! The species name, picata, means pied (usually black and white but in this case, grey and white?).

The far-carrying, repetitive ‘wonk-wonk-wonk…’ call is more often heard than the bird is seen.

Wongas are strictly ground feeders and often have dedicated pathways through the bush.

Their habitat is wet forest areas down the eastern seaboard, stopping abruptly about here in West Gippsland.

These two, or perhaps it was same bird twice, appeared recently at Rokeby. More information in an earlier post here.